Tony Urban Studios - The Blog

Talk about a last minute trip! My mid winter voyage was just bumped up and I’m now going to be out of town from Jan 6 through the 12. I won’t have access to email or voicemail while I’m gone, but I’ll respond to any inquiries as soon as business reopens on the 13th.

Have a great week!

I revamped the blog a bit. It looks new and spiffy and it’s easier than ever to leave comments. So leave comments!

I also imported all of the photos from Ye Olde Blog into this one. The old blog will be put to rest like a lame horse in the coming weeks, so if you want to say your goodbyes, do it soon.

No, I’m not going to blog about the awesome 80’s slasher movie, the poster for which showed a guy nearly being impaled by a shish kabob (although that movie is awesome and I’m watching it right now), today is my birthday!  You can send cash or gifts to the address on my site.  Just kidding.  Unless you really, really want to. 

As my birthday approached, I couldn’t help but think about what an incredible life I’ve had.  I don’t mean that to sound arrogant (After all, I’m not zipping around in my Lamborghini in the south of France or anything like that), but rather in terms of being blessed in so many of the areas of life that truly matter.  While my family has experienced it’s share of tragedy, I still have the best parents.  While most of my friends were going to college or getting “real jobs”, my parents supported me while I ventured into the film industry.  I mean, how many parents would actually encourage their 18 year old son (in rural PA of all places) to try to break into the movies business?  Mine did.  And their constant support enabled me to achieve success there.

And, when I decided to stop working in film and open my photography business, they again gave their unwavering support.  Now, 5 years later, I have a “job” I truly love.  And let me tell you, one of the greatest gifts in life is being able to do something you love and make a good living at it.  I can’t imagine toiling away doing something else. I feel like photography was my destiny.

In the past year, the world has opened up to me as I traveled thousands of miles in April and October.  That doesn’t look to be slowing down either, and in a few months (or maybe in a few weeks depending on how things work out), I’ll be visiting the South East portion of the country.  And, in early 2010 I plan to take a huge coast to coast road trip across the country visiting Texas, California and countless other places in between.

I love seeing different parts of the country and hope to be able to spend more time on travel-related photography projects in the future.  Ideally, I’d like take an entire year, spending one week in every state, photographing the people I meet and the places I see.  I think it would be an incredibly exciting project, but realistically I know it would have to be spilt into multiple years, since taking a year off work wouldn’t exactly be practical. 

The freedom you experience while traveling is incredibly invigorating.  You feel like you have endless possibilities and that in no time at all you can be in another town, another city, another state or even another country.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan to go all Alexander Supertramp and move into a bus in the wilds of Alaska or anything (after all, that didn’t end very well), but skipping around the country without a care in the world certainly has its appeal.

So here, in the waning hours of my birthday and at the end of 2008, I just have to take a moment to remember how fortunate I am and what great people surround me.  I can’t imagine my life being much better than it has been and I’m sure the future will just bring more excitement and more adventures.  Thank you all who have helped me get to where I am and who are sharing this great life with me.

For about the past month, my Jeep has been acting up.  The first time I start it, it starts perfectly.  But if I stop and shut off the engine for 10 minutes or more, when I try to start it again it starts, then immediately stalls.  I have to constantly give it gas to keep it running.  After a minute or two, it runs fine.   Then I can shut it off, let it sit and it starts up perfectly the third time.  It’s always the second start that causes the stalling problem.

Well, almost always.  Christmas day, I actually started the Jeep, drove a couple miles and then pulled into a parking lot.  I shut off the engine, then started it again.  I thought maybe this would trick the Jeep into getting past the “second start” problem.  I guess in my mind the Jeep is a modern day, less cool version of Christine that I can communicate with and which will understand.  Alas, the Jeep was smarter.  It did start, but it saved the stalling issue for the 3rd start instead.

I know I should take it to the mechanic to have it checked out.  While there, I can have the rear hatch latch fixed.  That’s been broken for almost a year and I had to remove the plastic cover on the inside and manually pull the metal rod to open the hatch.

The Jeep is sort of a pain.  But you can drive up a mountain with it.  I think it all balances out.